Readers of this blog in the past 48 hours include people in Beijing, China Argentina, as well as federal and state law enforcement officials. The reader in Beijing was searching for "the ways to clean up the city." Let us count the ways -- we've got voting, journalism, activism and litigation, to name four. The crisis of the spirit demonstrated by the illegal pollution requires basic change in the government of the Nation's Oldest City, founded in 1565.
Our City of St. Augustine has rightly earned the attention of federal and state law enforcement for over four decades, since desegregation orders during the 1960s. What happened in St. Augustine led to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In 1964, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said St. Augustine was the the "most lawless" city in America.
Today, St. Augustine's municipal government is still a lawbreaker, with contempt for environmental, open records, sunshine, civil rights and open government laws. When I asked some 90 questions of our City Manager, City Attorney and City Commissioners commencing February 24 -- regarding the dumping of the entire contents of Riberia Street's old illegal city dump into the Old City Reservoir -- Mayor George Gardner promised on February 27 "answers" at the City Commission meeting. No "answers" have been provided by our City. Our City's contractor and counsel have instead provided flummery. (See below).
Our City Commissioners held a meeting on Friday the 13th regarding the resignation of City Attorney James Patrick Wilson. There was no notice. FDLE is now investigating that meeting, and a pattern of possible Sunshine violations by our City, to include those taking place in NYC and Europe. (See below).
Those who pollute, discriminate and retaliate will be held accountable. Our cause is just.
Our citizens are entitled to better government, which works for all hte people and serves as a just steward of our environmental heirtage and 10,000 years of history.
As the ancient equitable maxim says, "let justice be done though the heavens fall."
"Keep your eyes on the prize," as the spiritual put it best. As President Johnson told a joint session of Congress in 1965, "we shall overcome."
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